Although written like a 10th grader’s school project, Scott Peck’s A Different Drum, has several insightful gems that make the otherwise tedious reading worthwhile. For tribe-building, consider this book, or at least a cliff-noted version of it, essential reading, even if, like so many ‘prophets’ or ‘gurus,’ the author’s personal life didn’t quite mirror what he wrote about.

Like the Kubler-Ross grieving model, Peck says that there is a series of steps needed for a group to achieve actual Community:

Pseudo-community
Chaos
Emptiness
Community

Without boring you with the details, here’s a quick recap…

A group meets with a possible common goal (art, peace, politics, whatever) and quickly forms a pseudo-community, where politeness reigns, individuality is temporarily stashed away in lieu of manners and people start sharing ideas. This, although well-intended, is far from an actual community/tribe, since there is too much focus on the common and outright avoidance of the individual differences that are needed to promote growth.

Soon, this fact becomes obvious, and conflict arises. Chaos begins, and often this might be where the process grinds to a halt. But spontaneous evolution often occurs and the group then learns how to communicate (which, as I mentioned in a previous post, is one of the three important factors for a healthy tribe. Even the word ‘communicate’ shares the same root as ‘community.’).

Now the process toward community has truly begun. I’ll delve into the next step, ’emptiness,’ later, but let’s ruminate on the fact that from this chaos a Tribe learns that conflict isn’t a bad word, nor does it have to designate a venomous competition. Paths aren’t always parallel, even if the same top of the mountain beckons to both climbers. True communities/tribes talk and share, disagree and argue, resolve and grow.

As before, our modern electoral process highlights how far we are from that. Two pseudo-community camps battling it out for supremacy. I wish I had the faintest clue how to start the process of change for said system, but I’d rather just go play with the iron and eat a salad.

An exceedingly well written blog and a point that can never be made often enough: “…conflict isn’t a bad word, nor does it have to designate a venomous competition. …True communities/tribes talk and share, disagree and argue, resolve and grow.”